Science

The dissemination activities of DEMEAU were planned in the beginning of the project and outlined in the dissemination strategy (von Toggenburg et al. 2013). After three years of project work, we have a look at the achievements of these dissemination activities.

After training of the neural net, ANCS was adjusted with the automatic functions and was used to control the pilot plant automatically. The results in terms of flux rate, recovery, chemical and energy demand will be compared to the respective results of the large technical scale backwash-water treatment plant operated without ANCS. This task showed successful modelling of start- and end permeabibity after/before backwashing and resulted in a cost reduction of 4 - 25 %

In June, the DEMEAU project will hold its series of final dissemination events. To tailor the final events to the diverse stakeholders and interest groups of the project, the events will be held in a two part series. The first part, held in Zurich, Switzerland on June 17th and 18th, will be a Final Consortium Meeting and Utility Event. The second part, held at the annual WSsTP Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on June 24-26th will serve as a Final Policy Event. Agendas are forthcoming.

Results from MAR soil-column experiments simulating soil aquifer treatments were recently published in the scientific journal, Water Reserach. The article, a collaborative effort among researchers working on the DEMEAU project, presents the results on experiments that have been used to simulate groundwater recharge and the impact of emerging pollutants in groundwater. Mario Schaffer, from the University Göttingen, is the lead author of the publication.

The three EU projects funded under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme, Globaqua, Cytothreat & Endetech, together with SCARCE from the Consolider Programme (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), organised a workshop in which pharmaceuticals were regarded from a multidisciplinary perspective. During talks, posters and discussions, experts from different fields had the opportunity for exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences from their respective fields. Marta Hernandez (cetaqua) presented a poster on WA1 results on Managed Aquifer Recharge.

The second annual Project Steering Board meeting of the FP7 project DEMEAU took place on May 19th and 20th at the premises of KWR Watercycle Research Institute in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. Project coordinator Theo van den Hoven welcomed the DEMEAU project members with a brief introduction of KWR, its services and activities and the scope and objectives of DEMEAU. Subsequently, the Work Area (WA) leaders had the opportunity to give a summarising overview of their work progress.

On October 2 2014, a DEMEAU utility event took place at the premises of Aigües de Barcelona. It was the first utility event that combined the presentation of research and implementation of Managed Aquifer Recharge with an interactive workshop contributing to work in DEMEAU’s Work Area 5 on Life Cycle Analysis and Life Cycle Costing.

DEMEAU’s Work Area 1 conducted a study review on trace organic removal rates in different Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) sites. The review concluded that redox and residence time conditions are part of the key parameters that are able to estimate emerging pollutants removal. MAR enables storage of water in periods of good resource quantity and it offers natural degradation of some pollutants, although some trace organic compounds have shown to be poorly degradable or may be removed only under specific conditions.